The Traitors
by MsTria
Summary: My name is Esaren One Nine Nine. This is my story, which I write here alone and forgotten, a story about a forbidden love, a passion that should have been quelled... about a treason that costed the lives of the both of us. Only in different ways.
1. Prolog

_**The Traitors**_

_**Prolog**_

My name is Esaren One-Nine-Nine.

It's not a long time since I was a mighty warlord in the service of the Empire that rules the galaxy. Since I had a glorious future waiting me, my head full of dreams of more fame and power, with no worries except such as an incompetent subordinate. However, when I'm sitting here now, it all feels like it had happened hundreds of years ago. As if I hadn't been the same Yeerk at all then. Maybe I'm even right in a way when I say so. I've experienced so much and changed so much within the latest years. And I've learnt some facts about the universe we live in.

Some cruel facts.

I am writing this on a planet called Earth. In case you don't know, it's on the edge of the Northern Province of the Yeerk Empire. _Our _Empire, as I used to say once. But it, the great nation of my people which does not know the word forgiving, is one reason why I am now here in a scabby suburb of one human city on Earth, in a country called the United States of America. Another is the species all around me – the humans. Those weak creatures walking on two legs. I live in the body of one, so I guess I can't really criticize the whole species, but those who were part of why I fell down to this situation were humans. Five young humans.

My people is taking over Earth. Those five humans are trying to fight us. And they manage well. That is all because of the fool who is leading the invasion – Esplin Nine-Four-Double-Six, the "prime". Who used to be my friend, when we were fellow Vissers. But everything has changed. Though I know the secret of the humans, I will not help Esplin. I'd rather see the human species free than Esplin Nine-Four-Double-Six as Visser One. I am now here, alone and forgotten, and Esplin is still holding his rank as Visser Three and using most of his time for living glamorous and obscene life with his mistress.

Obscene, I say- though if we keep what my people calls obscene, I am the worst of all, I think. I've gone so far in obscenity that I am a traitor. A traitor of my species. Although it wasn't my decision. You can't order your heart. Mine chose an enemy. A member of people that we had been at war with for many, many generations. And he loved me too. Both of us paid for that with our lives. For him it just meant death. For me it meant losing everything. My rank, regard, friends. That equals death to a Yeerk Visser. The only difference is that the shame is much, much greater. And you can't get away from it.

What is the most rending – and strange – is that all this happened to me actually twice.

This is the story about the man I loved and love still, about my way from riches to rags, about dreams that crushed, about a broken friendship, about desperate tries for making everything fine again – but for the most of all this story is about a forbidden love. Passionate love that should have been quelled. Me, Esaren One-Nine-Nine, am writing this with my own human hands, with tears in my human eyes.


	2. How It Began

_**Chapter 1 – How It Began**_

I was born in the Homeworld in the usual way.

I passed the training with the best grades of my generation in exo-biology, galactic history and war science, and stepped to the military forces immediately after that, in a Hork-Bajir host. It was all I wanted to do, it had been clear to me for years. I wanted power and fame. My first chief was the then Visser Twelve who took me to the planet of the Sstram. I left from there as a Visser, after many, many successful battles that had ended to the lose of the Sstram. Visser Twenty-Nine with a Sstram host. The number of the Vissers grew that time – there had been only twenty-seven of them when I had left my training, but the wider our Empire became, the more there were young and vital Yeerk warriors who wanted to serve their people until death and dedicate their lives to war, and had ability to do it. I, however, passed them all and became Visser Twenty.

I was one hell of a typical young Visser with all my life story. The same couldn't be said about the guy I soon got to know.

He had been born as the Prime of a twin pair, and that meant he had been trained much more carefully than an ordinary Yeerk. Everyone knows that Primes are stronger – mentally and physically - and more dominating and aggressive than average… they can even have tendency for being psychopathic. Primes are often favored in military forces, they can, for example, get a promotion easier. However, I had once seen a Prime class in training, and… I have to say I didn't envy them at all. Anyway, this Prime was called Esplin. Esplin Nine-Four-Double-Six. He was made a Visser in the same time with me. I can never forget my amazement, when his name was t announced and… an Andalite walked on the stage.

I got to know that this Esplin was the first Yeerk ever who had managed to infest an Andalite, and it was the greatest part of why they made him a Visser.

"Esplin must be happy now", I remember a female Hork-Bajir-Controller next to me muttering in the bizarre Yeerkish-Hork-Bajirish mixed language that is used by almost every one. "This was always his dream. To become the first Andalite-Controller in the universe. He had some kind of obsession to Andalites. He was… strange, I think that's the best word. Strange."

Yes, he _was _strange. Why would any self-respecting Yeerk like to have the face of an _Andalite? _I hated Andalites. Actually a Yeerk who _didn't _hate every Andalite in the universe was found at least a strange weirdo, in worst case a traitor who deserved death. The Andalites were nothing but hypocritical scum. They thought they had the highest moral among the peoples of the galaxy, but in fact they all were double-moralistic and brutal dapsens. It had been repeated to me since I had hatched, and of course it was right.

"Esplin hates Andalites", the Hork-Bajir said when I mumbled something like that to her. "Oh yes he does… but he also admires them. His hate is not the traditional sort. It has something… dark. Yes, dark there is. I don't exactly know what it is… but it's there."

_Strange guy, he is. He seems to be a walking trouble. Better stay away from him_, I decided then. Nevertheless, I broke my promise in the same event.

When I was already leaving there, I heard a public thought-speech voice yelling something.

(Of course a Visser has a right to punish his subordinates by death! Things do not go forward if he just accommodates himself to some low-ranks' opinions all the fucking time!)

I took my bearings towards the mess of that thought-speech voice and some common voices, which was heard from a short way off.

The Andalite-Controller – Esplin, or what was his name – stared a couple of Hork-Bajir- , Mak- and Sstram-Controllers.

"Your subordinates won't trust you if they consider you as cruel and vicious!" the same Hork-Bajir-Controller I had talked with spat.

(Who cares?) Esplin sneered back. (I am their Visser! It's their fucking job, to obey _me_!)

"You're nuts, Esplin", one of the Mak-Controllers sighed.

(Visser Thirteen to you!) he snapped.

"I think E… Visser Thirteen is right", I suddenly found myself saying. "The Visser has to keep a proper discipline for his subordinates. They have to respect and even to be afraid of him. Otherwise it won't work. A Visser is there to order, the low-ranks to obey."

Visser Thirteen looked at me. (Great. Finally someone who has some sense.)

The crowd split up little by little, and in the end there were only Visser Thirteen and me standing on the metal floor of the big spaceship.

(Oh yes), he said. (I almost forgot. I am Esplin Nine-Four-Double-Six, the Prime, from… well, nowhere. Yeah, really. That place was a real nothing.)

"Esaren One-Nine-Nine from Hett Simplat pool", I stuttered as I set my hand on my chest like the inter-galactic salute is. The word "Prime" had got my attention. "Or… well, Visser Twenty."

(From the Homeworld), Esplin said. He smiled a smile which wasn't a smile – one of an Andalite. It was reflected from his eyes in a funny way.

It was the beginning of our friendship. Of course, since we were both Vissers now we didn't see each other so often, but luckily our information technology is so developed that it wasn't a problem to keep in touch even if we were on opposite sides of the galaxy. Esplin was always good company after a long and hard day. If I was seriously pissed off because of some low-rank's mistake, his pitch-black humor made me smile. We also used to simply _talk _about things. I remember he was often very rigid and uncompromising in his opinions, disliked critics… in almost everything. Somehow it irritated me. He could keep on talking back though it was clear he was wrong. When I think of it now, I see the unlimited arrogance and narcissism that was an essential part of him even then. Unluckily, I didn't see it then – or at least I didn't care of it.

Esplin also liked to be alone. Sometimes he didn't want to talk with me for one Earth week – I know, I've been in human body for too long time, but I use the Earth times here, okay? Anyway, while I had a few friends in my army, Esplin seemed to have just mates in his. I believe he never wanted to have many friends, and maybe he wouldn't have even got. He was… yes, too strange to be understood by the majority. Come on – an Andalite-Controller who treated his subordinates bad, listened only himself and was very often seen alone looking dangerous and gloomy…

Although he had one interest that pulled him together with other Controllers now and then. It was something that had become a trend after the enslaving of the Sstram, the species that enjoyed their reproduction really hard. Some Yeerks wanted to experience it too, so they took the medicines we had gotten from the Andalites when they had arrived, developed them a little, and gave them a new purpose… to separate the enjoyable mating from the filthy thing called reproduction. I knew Yeerks who were sure their "enjoying" fellows had disloyalty for their species, but I wasn't one of them. Still I neither understood Esplin who spent a part of his time for screwing Sstrams, in morph or as himself. For me acting like a host was disgusting, no matter if I could consider it as a sign of a treason or not.

Notice: I said it _was_.

Years went by, and I climbed higher in rankings. So did Esplin. When everything changed, I was the legendary demanding Visser Four, and he was Visser Three and known wide for his cruelty and lewdness. The Andalites had named him the Abomination. I had changed my host a short time before. Esplin had been sent to a planet which was the home of the only known Class Five alien species. Yes, humans, and of course the planet which Esplin had to take over was the one where I am watching the time passing by even on this moment – Earth. So, I had decided to take a human host, and Esplin had promised to deal one to me.

This is the strangest part of this story. I remember clearly how I went to a human city and to its Yeerk pool with Esplin and infested a human. A man called John Berryman. An actor, but unsuccessful enough to take away from Earth. And in that body I experienced all those pleasures and sufferings this story is about, until I finally got a chance to do something really desperate and took it… and failed. Died. Yes, I remember that I _died_, I remember what it felt…

How I can be here writing this then? Well, I'm not sure for it even myself. But these human hands I'm writing with don't belong to a man called John Berryman. The human I'm sharing my body with is Darcy Lee, also male, green-eyed, with half-long dark hair. I got him from another human city, through the Yeerks' cover organization The Sharing – when I came to Earth for the first time with Esplin. In the other city there wasn't any free and ready human host right then, and I didn't bother myself to wait since I could get a host immediately from another place.

There is no John Berryman. Nobody has ever heard of him, I have been asking.

Don't ask me how it went like that. It was because of my desperate try to repair all, I think. But I'll tell about it later. The essential fact is that everything I really want to tell went almost in the same way in both of my memory lines. With both John Berryman and Darcy Lee.

Well, where was I? Oh yes, I was Visser Four, had a human host – no matter who – and Esplin was leading the invasion of Earth as Visser Three. And I was fighting against the Andalites somewhere far, far away. In some very remote place of this galaxy. Actually I was voyaging towards the Homeworld by my own dark green ship, when the fatal day began.

Oh yes, there I was, on the bridge with my fine green-black uniform on. I was reading the coordinates. We were passing a solar system, which of course had no use for me, because there wasn't any capable species there. I didn't listen at all what happened around me, I was too concentrated for counting how long it would take until we'd arrive to Homeworld and I'd tell to the Council about the various results of the battles… and hope for best. They say that the only thing that a good Visser is afraid of is the Council of Thirteen. The highest jury of the whole Yeerk Empire. Still I was waiting for returning home. I had been on war treks so long. I remember how I wondered absent-mindedly what the Council would have said about driving so much after the other war ships. If I had driven closer, I might still have my rank and honor… Funny.

I woke up from my trance as one of my Sub-Vissers shouted out loud: "Alarm! Andalite ships in the sector ED-7!"

I straightened my back instinctively. "Send the Bug fighters!" I yelled. "Now! We'll take them by surprise!"

I felt the familiar fighting excitement flowing into me. I wasn't afraid, you know, war is every Visser's best friend, but deep inside my mind I knew it all the time, surely every Visser knows: when the battle begins, it's not self-evident at all that you're alive when it's over.

I followed the Bug fighters as they speeded through the blackness of space towards the Andalite ships. Then blue beams appeared among our orange ones! The Andalites hadn't been as helpless and unaware as I had thought!

"Oh shit", I muttered.

"Fighters in PL-2! Fighters in PL-2!" a lieutenant howled at the monitors. "They're not ours!"

"Shoot them down, you idiots!" I screamed. But it was too late. There went an Andalite fighter… there went another… and then a very bright blue flash. Very close.

I heard a terrible noise as the shredder beam hit the motors of my ship. The ship tilted and trembled and began to rock. The Sub-Visser tried to explode the fighter that had shot but the Dracon beam only skimmed its one wing, and the fighter fell from its course and plunged in a spin towards the green and purple planet which was shining below us.

"Warning. Warning. The walls are breaking. The vacuum will come in…"

_The vacuum. _The horrible word echoed in my ears. For a moment I only stood still, trying to understand the message, and listening the terrified screams of my subordinates. Then came panic. I dashed off the bridge. Maybe I screamed something like "Vissers first!"

My destination was the deck of emergency capsules. I remember that I ran faster in Berryman's body, in Lee's I was opening the door of the capsule just in time – the walls were crashing pushed by the space. I locked myself to the capsule and started it. As I felt the capsule being thrown to the emptiness, all I could do was to close my eyes.


	3. Facing the Enemy

_**Chapter 2 – Facing the Enemy**_

I woke up little by little.

I was still laying in the capsule. My head felt like someone was cutting metal there, but nothing seemed to be broken. The gauges of the capsule showed that it had landed and the atmosphere of the planet had enough oxygen and pressure for a human to walk safely there, so I opened the door of the capsule and staggered out.

For a moment I saw nothing but shades of turquoise and yellow and bright light. I shrieked, pressed my hands on my face and fell down on the ground. Maybe I fainted for a moment, at least in Lee's body… As my consciousness cleared up, I moved my fingers slowly off my eyes and saw blue grass under me. I remembered an important piece of instruction that had been told me in the training – _never lay on the ground of an unknown planet_ – so I got up quickly and shivering.

My eyes began to get used to the light, and I was now able to figure my surroundings. I was in some kind of jungle full of different plants. So that was what the planet we had been passing looked like – the coordinates that flashed in the capsule weren't very different from those which I had read in the ship. There seemed to be nobody near – but, as I knew well, it didn't have to mean that there wasn't anybody. There could be other survivors from my ship in that jungle – or there could be Andalites there as well. And I was armless. If the Andalites found me, I would be vulnerable.

I really understood my situation not before it. A cold lump flowed to my stomach when it occurred to me: I had no way out here. The capsule was disposable. Maybe the other ships had advanced too far for me to reach them with the poor devices of the capsule… I ran back in and pounded out the official code of the military forces of the Empire.

_Yeerk ship. Yeerk ship. This is Visser Four. I am abandoned on a planet. My coordinates are…_

No respond. I yelled in despair. I might be the last Yeerk left in this part of the universe. Without a pool, without any kind of Kandrona. I had eaten just before the battle but in three Earth days I'd undergo the process my people fears more than anything: starvation.

"I don't want to die!" I cried though I knew it wouldn't help me.

(But you'll die, a painful death), I remember Lee mocking.

(You die in three days), Berryman said in my memories. (But my starvation is going to be much longer! I mean, is there anything to eat here?)

I didn't care of my host's whine.

Then I noticed something glimmering in the corner of the capsule, on the wall. I grabbed it and saw it was a Dracon gun. Now I remembered that modern emergency capsules were always equipped with one. I sighed in joy and took the gun to my hand. Not much but better than nothing. First I had to burn the trees that covered me… that place was almost impossible to land to…

Suddenly I heard noise, and grasped my fist tighter around the gun. You see, I didn't exactly _hear _the voice but it echoed just inside my head. It was thought-speech, the language of the Andalites. I glanced around myself. Nobody nowhere. But I knew that Andalites were able to disguise themselves well. They had technology that made turning into representatives of another species possible, Esplin always enthused over it. I heard the voice again, and realized it was screaming. It was a desperate cry.

I took cover and began to crawl, the Dracon gun in my other hand. I decided to check the matter out. It could be a trap, but it could be Yeerk troops fighting Andalites as well. I shivered in excitement.

I saw weird-looking huge green bugs creeping on the yellow-orange trunks of the trees and hoped there wouldn't be very many of them on the ground. They had long horns and legs and looked poisonous. That's why you shouldn't ever just lay on the ground – there can be anything there.

My palm pushed against something slimy! I got frightened and pulled my hand quickly off. My palm burned and smarted, and I wiped it to my uniform pants. Then I saw the thing I had leaned against on the ground. It was a purple formless lump that hissed quietly and had thousands of tiny lobes under it. I turned my palm towards my eyes. It was partly eaten. I shuddered and crept on.

I heard the thought-speech voice again.

(Noooo!) it cried. (I do not want to die like this!)

I hurried. If there was really an Andalite dying or captured, I wanted to see it. The voice was so real. That kind of despair and terror couldn't be pretended. Finally I came to the edge of a clearing. The cry was heard from there, up in the air…

(No! No! Leave me alone!)

And there, high between the trees, was an Andalite. He was hanging there upside down, hold by green goo covering him everywhere. He wasn't even able to move his tail. However, the main reason for his horror were the creatures that approached him slowly: like big black centipedes which had two pairs of crotches as jaws. I laughed. What a great end for an Andalite filth!

I waited him to submit to his destiny and let the centipedes sink their jaws to him, but he didn't. He fought though he surely knew he'd lose. That, I realized suddenly, was common for all Andalites I'd heard of. They never gave up, while we Yeerks accepted our share if there was simply nothing to do.

That Andalite was a fool. But… a brave fool.

I don't know what got into me. If I got some kind of mental disturbance. I lifted my Dracon gun and shot.

Not the Andalite but the green goo.

The slim sizzled and disappeared around the Andalite, letting him drop down to the ground, to the bush under the trees. I slunk closer with the gun ready to shoot again. I knew the Andalites were fast, their tails especially. I had seen Esplin in action. I also kept on glancing around. Who knew if there were other Andalites there who had heard their mate's cries…

The bushes swished as something blue jumped out towards me! I shot and dived aside. I heard a painful yell inside my head and smelt the stink of burnt flesh. Then something hit me to my back. I gasped and dropped my gun as I was hurled a short way off. I saw the Andalite lifting his tail.

_Where was my gun?_

I noticed it in the grass, grabbed it in one blink of an eye and pointed at the Andalite right when he was going to lash me.

For a moment we just stared at one another.

(Yeerk), the Andalite said with his thought-speech voice full of acid-like hate.

"Andalite", I answered in at least as despising voice and panted.

(Yeerk… Visser), the Andalite added, obviously recognizing my dirty uniform. His tone of voice turned a little more respective but the hate stayed. (I do not know the species of your poor host but I know what you are. You are from the ship I shot down. Come on, call your subordinates to take me as your prisoner! You can torture me forever if you just want to, but you will never get any information from me!)

Was it true?

"Do you mean there are no other survivors?" I asked simply.

(I do not know anything), the Andalite answered. (And if I knew, I would not tell it to you, Yeerk filth.)

I estimated my alternatives. I had full three Earth days of time to get away from that planet and to my people. If I had a living Andalite prisoner with me, it would mean a certain promotion. So the Andalite was extremely invaluable for me. Right. I'd take the Andalite and go back to the emergency capsule. If someone was looking for me, they would probably notice the weak signals of it.

_If someone was looking for me. _If the low-ranking Vissers in the other ships had realized early enough that my ship wasn't following them anymore. Otherwise I would go through the Kandrona starvation in front of the eyes of an Andalite. But what else could I do? Submit to the Andalite? Never. Let the Andalite go and leave to the capsule alone? No, if there was any chance I'd return to my people. Besides that, the Andalite could find his fellows - if there were them - and they'd come to me all together. And the Andalite didn't even know I was alone… I decided to shoot him and then myself, if nobody would find me.

"Go before me", I said in a shivering voice.

(I told you there is no use for it!) the Andalite shouted out. He kept his stillness but I could sense his fear.

"I don't care", I said. "I'll do it all just for fun. Don't try anything."

Heck, had I spent too much time with Esplin? He tortured Andalites for fun, not me. In fact, I had never had a real Andalite as a prisoner. Then I realized I had never even been so close to an Andalite before.

This individual wasn't very young, it could be seen from his face. It had scars and a few lines. His eyes were quite small for an Andalite and they were blue. His fur was also blue but it had brown hairs that had spread all around it like creepers.

I shook my head and turned my thoughts to the essential.

"Go before me, Andalite filth", I repeated, and the Andalite obeyed. Fine. Now I just had to take my bearings to the capsule…

But where was it? 

Panic flamed in me again, as I realized I had no idea where I had come from. The jungle looked the same everywhere.

(What is the matter with you, Yeerk filth?) the Andalite smirked. (Problems? And where are your subordinates then? You… yes, you don't even have a phone with you. I know you Vissers. You would never crawl around on a strange planet alone voluntarily.)

Oh shit. He had guessed. But…

"And what are you going to do then?" I snapped. "I'll fry you before you've moved your tail, Andalite filth! Or are your little friends somewhere? Fine! Hopefully they shoot me fast with their Shredders, so that I don't have to starve to death!"

(I do not know where my fellows are or are they alive, as I already told you, but I hope they will find us soon! We will watch your death, Yeerk filth!)

"I've got a name!" I yelled suddenly. "I am Esaren One-Nine-Nine, not some _Yeerk filth_!"

The Andalite stared at me. For a moment none of us said anything. Then the Andalite said quietly:

(And I am Samilin-Corrath-Gahar. The Tactic Officer of Prince Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul. Not some _Andalite filth_ either.)


	4. The Discussion

_**Chapter 3 – The Discussion**_

_Samilin-Corrath-Gahar._

His name told me nothing. It was just an Andalite name, just like thousands of others… although this was the first time I heard an Andalite saying his name himself. When you blow up an Andalite fighter, you don't have time to ask names. And they don't even interest you. An Andalite is an Andalite. An enemy.

But the other name told me much more.

"_Elfangor_", I repeated. "Elfangor the Beast."

Esplin had talked so much about Elfangor. Or, in fact _raged_ would have been more honest expression. Elfangor-Sirinial-Shamtul, a young Andalite Prince, had been Esplin's Enemy Number One for years. Though Esplin wouldn't have got his Andalite body without Elfangor, or so I had understood from what Esplin had told, he hated him more than anybody. Even more than Edriss Five-Six-Two, our fellow Visser who he described as "that infuriating hypocritical little dapsen". Well, no Yeerk exactly loved Elfangor since he really was a dangerous warrior, but Esplin's hate for Elfangor was nearly an obsession. And it did stand for a reason. Elfangor had made a fool of Esplin several times, causing him humiliating situations. Many times Esplin had almost caught him, but always he had managed to escape. And nothing annoys Esplin more than an enemy he tries and tries to catch and never succeeds. The more the enemies run away, the more Esplin hates them, until he's blinded up with his hate, and it doesn't help him to get the enemies caught. Although he did kill Elfangor about a year after that, the same is now happening again with the five humans trying to stop his invasion project.

(Is that what you call him?) Samilin-Corrath-Gahar asked mockingly. (Elfangor the Beast?)

"What do you expect?" I snapped. "He is a beast! He's slain hundreds of Yeerks!"

(Because _you_ are a _race_ of beasts! Monsters!) Samilin yelled. (You filthy slugs are the cancer of the galaxy!)

"Oh, really?" I sneered. "And what do you think you are, oh my noble Andalite warrior? The doctors?"

(The defenders of the thing that every creature loves the most), Samilin hissed. (Freedom. Freedom, which you have taken from millions.)

"Freedom." I laughed. "Andalites and their hypocritical idealism. All those species we use as hosts are lower forms of life, after all. They're less intelligent than us. It's the right of the strongest one. I thought you Andalites tend to believe in it, at least when I've watched your foreign planet policy."

His tail moved a little. I grasped the Dracon gun tighter and stared at him, so that he surely understood that I'd shoot if he tried something. He didn't try. He just watched me with his eyes flaming in hate.

"Yeah, my little Andalite", I mocked. "Don't try to chant the lies of your people. I know what you're doing when you try to stop us. You're not _defending freedom_, or any other shit. You just want to rule the galaxy yourself."

(That is not true!) Samilin cried. (That is all _your_ lies! All we want is to make sure that everyone can life full life! Including those _lower forms of life_ as you call them! They are conscious beings too, just like you, though they're not able to do everything you can. Doesn't your host hate you? Doesn't he want to be independent and not just your slave? Would you like to have the same destiny yourself. Yes, you would not. That's how you recognize you're doing _wrong_!)

It was my turn to be silent for a moment. I listened my host's crying. I saw all that despise and hate he felt for me. And then, you see, I had that feeling for the first time ever: what if we Yeerks really had _no_ right to take over other species? Were we not better a species than all the others? Was I doing wrong in the only job I had ever dreamt on, leading war treks to new planets for catching some new hosts? The self-evidences in my life, everything I believed in, seemed to be in danger.

Then I remembered what is the event like every single one of my people has to undergo every third day. You see, in our natural form we are really, literally slugs. Blind little slugs that crawl on the ground without any legs or arms. Once a Yeerk has had a host and the sense called sight, the natural form feels like hell. It's not enough it's an eternal darkness, it's also an eternal vulnerability. The Andalite standing in front of me, that beautiful creature with a strong body and four sharp eyes, could never know what it was like.

"We have no choice", I said slowly. "We have to infest other creatures. Or we have to spend all our life in darkness, doing nothing but swimming around in a muddy, smelly pool. We would never know colors or light. Tell me, Andalite – which would you choose?"

Not before then I realized I had called the Andalite beautiful in my mind. I really had spent too much time with Esplin. He always praised the Andalite body. But when I looked at Samilin, I had to admit he really was beautiful. Strong and muscular and full of power. Still, I couldn't imagine myself using that body. It… just didn't feel right. Oh Kandrona, was I going insane? First I had opened in question the sacred facts every Yeerk learns in early training, and now I was beginning to _sympathize_ my enemy…

(I would), said Samilin, (take a voluntary host.)

"It sounds so nice and simple like that", I sneered. "But where do you find those hosts? Among species whose majority doesn't want to become Controllers. It's always so. They think it's wrong, just like you, so they begin to fight against us. They don't want anything that is against their precious values to exist. I know what I'm talking about. I can read this all from my host's mind. And there are we – back in 'Start'. War, killing, hate. And Vissers."

(Maybe), Samilin said, hesitating.

"Admit it, Andalite", I gloated, "your people have no reason to fight against us."

(Yes, we have), Samilin claimed. (You have over ten species enslaved. And you are trying to take over more! Why? Why you have to make your Empire wider? Admit it, Visser – that is pure hunger for power!)

That got my mouth shut. The Andalite was right. I don't shame to admit it. Personally I believe we Yeerks have some inborn urge to conquer and dominate. Why else couldn't we ever stop taking over planets? Why else were we Vissers still needed, after getting other host species than Gedds, seeing and more capable – the Naharas? What did we exactly do with all those Hork-Bajir, Mak, Sstram and others? Yes. Made war. To get always more hosts. To get more power.

So, I don't understand why I said it.

"Hey, it's equal treatment between species!"

Samilin struck speechless. His expression was worth of seeing. Maybe it was that, or maybe it was how I realized how stupid my comment had been, but I cracked up to laughter. Even on these days I don't understand why. I was standing in front of an Andalite, in a jungle full of dangerous bugs, stuck on a planet in-the-middle-of-nowhere with no guarantees of surviving. And I freaking _laughed_! But that was nothing compared to what happened next. _Samilin began to laugh too._

Firstly, if you've been taught all your life that Andalites are a race of expressionless war machines whose strict discipline only highlights their idiotic moral, you don't expect an Andalite standing in front of you to crack up to laughter. Secondly, Samilin had no more to laugh at than I did. But there we stood, laughing.

As I had recovered from my laugh fit, I remembered I had to find the emergency capsule. I pointed at Samilin with my Dracon gun and ordered him to go before me, for the last time. He began to walk forward slowly. I was glad it had been so easy, but underneath it all I was restless. Andalites usually didn't surrender at all, not to mention that they'd surrender so easily.

Of course, we didn't find the capsule. We probably went around in circles. Just laugh there, but you weren't in that damn jungle. I'm sure I would have got lost there even if I had had a map. Those turquoise and yellow giant super leafy trees with all sort of creepers covering them made sure that I saw like two meters forward and around me. I'm sure they grew all the time with incredible speed and modified the surroundings. Just try to find your way then… I couldn't even use my Dracon gun since they had a long firing range, and it was possible that if I had shot, I'd have hit the capsule. Besides, we had to mind bugs and the purple slimy lumps. Once a _huge_ bug, some kind of winged beetle that was at least seven inches long, landed on Samilin's back, he used his tail to wipe it away, and guess where it flew? Yes, _against my leg_. I had to use all my ability to control Darcy Lee, who unfortunately happened to be insect-phobic, and with one _deliberate_ move I wiped the bug to the ground and fried it with a Dracon beam.

"These fucking barbaric planets", I swore as we turned once again. "Species, leafiness, species, green landscapes, species, deep waters, species! Who the hell does anything with them?"

(Anything doesn't have to be useful for some rational species), Samilin hissed in despise.

"Yes, it must! Why to stand something that only disturbs you?"

(Disturbs?) Samilin was confused. (How can this disturb you? Okay, I do not mean just this situation, in which you are stuck in here, in this obviously dangerous jungle planet, far from your people…) Samilin was silent for a second. (But I mean things like every beautiful planet your people has destroyed!)

"Beautiful?" I repeated, as confused. "But we made them beautiful after we had taken over them!"

(What are you saying?) Samilin breathed. (You_ destroyed_ them! You demolished all what is good and leafy and clean and wiped out the diversity of their nature!)

I didn't understand. Was he really saying that it was bad – that all those wastelands that the planets of the Empire are full were _not_ beautiful?

"What are you talking about?" I sneered. "'Good and leafy'? They don't go together."

(They do!) Samilin cried. (What is good and beautiful, if not those rich forests and green meadows and blue lakes that the Andalite Home is full of, and so were many other planets before your filthy people came!)

"_What?_" I shrieked. "You're crazy, Andalite! What we turn our conquered planets to is beautiful! Ah, those endless wastelands with the dead trunks of trees and dried brooks, and the yellow open skies up on you…"

Samilin shook his head. (You Yeerks are as barbaric as I thought.)

"What is barbaric in having a desire to feel like home in different planets?" I shouted out. "You feel it too, don't you? Aren't you longing for your forests and meadows in space too? You have even all those Dome Ships and all."

(But… it is a horrible crime to do to a planet and its nature to destroy all, just because you want to feel like home!) Samilin almost yelled. I shrugged.

Darkness fell little by little. The voices of seethe became louder in the trees around us. I happened to take a quick glance at one tree…

"YAAAAAHH!" I cried out. Huge yellow eyes with no pupils stared right at me! Then the animal to whom the eyes belonged to apparently turned and jumped off the branch it had been sitting on.

"We stop here", I decided immediately. It could prove even dangerous to wander in this terrible jungle in pitch dark. Carefully I sat myself down on the ground and kept my eyes on Samilin.

"Yes, you stay here too", I said. "Don't go anywhere."

There I sat, staring at the first Andalite I had ever talked with, with the Dracon gun ready in my hands. Before that I hadn't realized how tired I was. Surely, after the battle and the entire day in a jungle… No! I couldn't let myself fall asleep! I had to watch over Samilin!

Tired.

Tired…

The next thing I understood was the Dracon gun being torn off my hands and a blade pushing against my throat.

(You lost, Visser), Samilin smirked.

I shook. I had fucked up the whole thing. The roles had changed. The Andalite was no more my prisoner, but vice versa.


	5. Life For Life

_**Chapter 4 – Life for Life**_

Samilin tied my hands behind my back using a loose creeper. I felt my wrists going numb as it constricted them. The other end of the creeper Samilin tied around his top body.

(_Now_), he said, (we sleep. And in case you do not know, we Andalites are able to sleep with our stalk eyes open. Even if we close them, we don't sleep a long time without a break, and we wake up easily… _very_ easily.)

I pondered every single way to escape I could ever imagine but didn't manage to make up any realistic plan. Samilin had thrown my Dracon gun to the darkness and it would be practically impossible to find it there. Moreover, he was stalking me all the time – he really didn't call the other pair of his eyes "stalk eyes" for nothing – and he would feel if I tried to wriggle out.

Finally I accepted the bitter truth: I had lost. The Council of Thirteen had lost their fourthly most high-ranking warlord. He, I, Esaren One-Nine-Nine of the Hett Simplat pool, would die a painful death in the filthy hands of the Andalite scum.

How cheerful. In fact it felt crushing. But there was no way out. I closed my eyes and let myself drift off to sleep, trying not to think my soaring hunger of Kandrona rays and what the Andalites might do to me. I was a Visser. And when a Visser faces an unavoidable destruction, he faces it calmly and bravely.

Whether it's so easy, it's another thing then.

I'm not too sure how long I had slept when I woke up. To freezing coldness. It felt like the ice – of course it couldn't be less than zero degrees, otherwise the jungle wouldn't have been that lush as it was, but still the air felt like icy – would have crept to my bones. The light ship uniform didn't have much use in keeping the warmth on my almost hairless human skin. I curled up in a little ball, but it made me feel only a bit better. I shivered and shivered in cold. My bare fingers had turned into ten pieces of ice.

Then an opportunity occurred to me. The idea felt quite disgusting at first but the other alternative was to stay where I was and freeze. So I rolled over, and my face touched soft Andalite fur. Yes, it was _soft_, although I had thought that Andalite hair is hard and coarse. Don't know why. It only fit to the picture of the machine-like monster an Andalite had always been shown to me by my elder Yeerk brothers and sisters. But Samilin was soft and warm. I could feel his tough muscles under the fur as I clung to his side.

(What are you doing, Yeerk?) Samilin shrieked.

"It's cold", I groaned like a new-hatched.

I expected Samilin to kick me off in hatred, disgusted by the Controller's hands on him, crying: (Stay in the cold and dark, you filth!) but no. He came closer instead.

(Yes, it is), he muttered.

We wrapped ourselves around one another. My face was pressed against Samilin's fur. I breathed the scent of the Andalite. It was weird but good.

(We Andalites do not keep our prisoners under bad circumstances, even if they were Yeerk), Samilin said. (We respect every species.)

I saw the idea in completely different light now that I was the prisoner myself.

It had also moved something in me when Samilin had said he was freezing too. As if I hadn't understood before that if you put an Andalite to cold, they freeze. Just like any other creatures.

And if you saw their tail off, they bleed and feel pain. I thought of Esplin, who had done that to his Andalite prisoners. I shuddered when I realized he was _an Andalite-Controller _– he knew the Andalites, he was able to think like one, an entire Andalite mind was watched by him. I imagined myself being forced to torture an innocent Yeerk fellow of mine. It would be horrible. How could Esplin make an _Andalite_ do that? An Andalite, to whom loyalty for one's own people is even more important than to us Yeerks? How could Esplin remain normal doing that, and even _enjoy_ it?

On the other hand, who has ever called him normal?

I wondered whether Samilin had friends. Or family, the issue that seemed to be quite important to the Andalites. I wondered whether he was missing them. He might never see them again… And he surely knew that fact well.

(Is someone waiting you?)

I woke up to reality. "Er… what?"

(Is someone waiting you there?) Samilin asked. (Among your own people?)

"The Council of Thirteen", I sneered. "They need their Visser back. Or not. They only need to promote the current Visser Five, and they have a Visser Four again. So I think not."

Somehow it didn't seem very likely that Esplin, not to mention warriors of mine, would actually "wait" me.

(I see), said Samilin. (You are not allowed to feel affection for anybody, are you? It disturbs your duties, eh?)

"_What_?" I exclaimed. "What the hell are you saying? Of course we're allowed to feel affection! Some Yeerks even have _orikaris orie, _or 'good friends'. Maybe it could be called love what there is between them. They're those who plan to spawn together. Their relationship can even include sex through hosts, although it's not common, not to mention a good thing. But you never prefer another Yeerk to our specified aims and emotions to rationality. I mean, only the weak and sentimental do that."

(Not the weak and sentimental, in my opinion), Samilin claimed. (Those who do not know their responsibility for their people.)

"Nah, maybe that's also true", I said cautiously. "But tell me, er, Samilin: did you really think that we aren't allowed to love? Has it been some kind of Andalitish propaganda?"

(Don't pronounce the name of my people in that despising fashion, Yeerk!)

"I pronounce it in the fashion I want to, Andalite!"

Samilin twitched his tail as if he was considering to slash me. He didn't, luckily.

(My mates once told me something like that), he finally said. He made a short pause. (And you don't have an _orikar oris_, eh)

"No", I admitted. "I've never had. When you're a Visser, you live for your work. You don't have time for close friendships."

(That sounds strange. We Andalites are herd animals. We need company, every one of us, from the mightiest Prince to his littlest _aristh_. It's almost impossible to live alone in our society – at least your parents make sure you'll not be lonely.)

For a moment he looked a bit sad.

"So there's always someone waiting for you", I stated. "But why are you such sacrificing fools then? If you don't live for yourselves in your pious unselfishness, don't you live for your loved ones?"

I couldn't avoid a despising tone of voice in "loved ones".

(We live for our people), Samilin said. (And being brave in battles, even if it costs you your life, brings glory to your family too.)

He sounded… bitter? I tried to find a good excuse for asking more – I didn't want the Andalite to think I was _interested_ in him – but Samilin went on.

(When I had just become a Prince, my parents decided I needed a wife. _People keep on asking why your son is still unmarried! We can't risk our reputation as a normal family!_ So they said to me. Our family friends happened to have a daughter who was also unmarried – I don't wonder at all – and oh yeah, the good match was there.)

"Marriage."

I sneered mockingly.

"I don't understand what it's for. Humans, the species of my host, also know the idea of marriage. You must forcibly find someone to share your life with? Ridiculous."

(As a Yeerk, you surely don't understand, since reproduction means death to you and you never see your descendents… It is a wonderful feeling when you come back from space and your wife and son or daughter are there waiting for you and you can run together on the endless fields… according to my brothers-in-arms. I have never understood females, at least not my wife. All she thinks is a child – a child that I have not yet given to her. It's my fault, of course. Besides, although I'm a Prince, it's not enough to her. She wants her husband to be a great hero, so that she could say 'I'm the wife of Samilin-Corrath-Gahar' to her friends and be proud. My mother was similar. She didn't study anything though she could have to – she was sure that her husband would live for her, and was right.)

"_Dapsenis_", I muttered.

(What?)

"It means 'fuckers'", I laughed. I heard melancholic laughter in my head too.

(No doubt.)

I saw Samilin's eyes glimmering in the dark. Something moved inside me. That made me shudder. I was really going insane. I hoped it was only the air of the planet. It would be over when I would be back home.

Oh, I forgot, I wasn't going back home.

"We Yeerks are always alone", I said absently. "And we _love our life_."

Samilin sneered, understanding my hint. (So did the creatures your race has slain. Now it's your turn to face death.)

"A death for defending the benefits of my people."

Samilin looked away. (Yes, Esaren One-Nine-Nine. Yes.)

I closed my eyes and began to sleep.

In the morning – the sun rose in a couple of hours, so I estimated the night was a bit shorter than on Earth – Samilin woke me up by yanking the creeper-string that chafed my wrists. We continued walking in the yellow and turquoise hell. The craving of Kandrona rays had begun to eat me, and that feeling is impossible to understand for any being who hasn't ever had it. First, in the stage I was going, it's nothing worse than exhaust and feebleness. Then you start to feel like you were lying in a warm oven. You dry out alive and there's no way out. Nobody knows how terrible it feels in the end, since no-one who has gone through the process completely can tell anything. Ever.

For my ultimate horror, the bushes swished then and two Andalites jumped out. Two muscular Andalites with their tails upright, holding Shredders and looking like killing machines. They stopped as they noticed Samilin.

(Prince Samilin?) one cried. (You are alive!)

(What is that you have with you? A _human_?) the other asked, squinting. As he walked closer, I recognized him. He was Elfangor. Beast Elfangor.

(This), Samilin uttered, (is a Yeerk.)

He pulled me forward, so that the other Andalites could see me.

(And not just a Yeerk. He… this… is Visser Four himself.)

I expected Beast Elfangor to grin in malicious delight. Come on, he had now a chance to torture a real Yeerk Visser! But he didn't do it. He only walked to me, looked at me from head to toe, nodded and pushed his tail blade against my throat.

(Move, Visser), he ordered.

Slashing the branches and creepers off with their tails, the Andalites made me walk into their fighter which was stopped about 100 yards away. I obeyed them like a zombie. What else could I have done? Besides, the situation felt so unreal. _Now it's happening._ Something the older Yeerks had always scared us with in training: being captured by the Andalites. But in the safety of the ships the whole idea had been so distant. If it hadn't been, I'm not sure whether I ever would have gone to the military. When you're leaving the training and going to become a Visser, and happen to think of the dangers of that job then, you shrug them off saying_: But that kind of things just can't happen to me._

Well, now it was happening to me anyway.

As the fighter was speeding away from the damned jungle planet, I felt like I had left there something in me. Of course, it was only some naive feeling twisted in my shocked mind.

The Dome Ship, the Andalite equivalent for our Pool Ships, was waiting in the orbit of the planet. I shivered in horror as the Andalites led me out of the fighter in the docking station and dragged me apparently through the whole ship. I was sure they would do some cruel humiliation to me in front of the eyes of every Andalite in that part of the galaxy, then execute me in such gruesome fashion that even Esplin couldn't have think up that. But where our journey ended was the bottom floor of the ship, a corridor with many strong steel doors. The prison of the ship.

(Stay here), Beast Elfangor told me as his fellows cut the creepers around my hands, pushed me to one of the cells, and shut the door. (Until we decide your final destiny.)

Rubbing my numb wrists, I sat down to the floor – the cell had no furniture, of course, since Andalites don't need them in such places – and pressed my hands on my face.

And the hours went by.

Second by second my hunger for Kandrona rays grew. Minute by minute I felt more terrible. All I thought of was what I felt and the approaching death, though I tried to lead my thoughts to something else. Anything else. But trying to push away the despair and the panic was like I had tried to climb out of a swamp. I was always pulled back to the slim of misery.

Maybe the Andalites would take my life in some other way than letting me starve to death. Maybe.

I as if wake up from the trance as I heard hooves clattering in the corridor and a thought-speech voice saying: (Time to change the guard.)

You see, I recognized that voice. It was Samilin-Corrath-Gahar. My Andalite.

_My Andalite? _I didn't dismay the combination of words that had just popped into my mind for a long time, until the little hatch in the steel door opened. I saw two blue Andalite eyes watching me.

(Esaren, how do you feel?) Samilin asked. I can say I was flabbergasted.

"What do you mean 'how do you feel'?" I snapped, trying to cover my confusion with bluntness. "Don't worry, I feel bad enough!"

(Don't talk to me in that tone of voice), Samilin answered as angrily, (or I will not help you out.)

"Help me out?"

If I had been flabbergasted a moment ago, now I was _totally_ flabbergasted.

"Is this some kind of joke or trap or something?"

(You're in the jail already. Why would I bother myself to make traps to you? Listen: you saved my life. I'm not going to leave you to my fellow Andalites' hands. They will kill you, maybe even blackmail the Council of Thirteen with you. I'm going to let you out of that cell and lead you to the dock of the prototypes of the new fighters. There should be nobody there in this time. Take a fighter and go away.)

I couldn't believe it. I had to be dreaming. Or maybe Samilin had gone insane. Anyway, he opened the door and let me step out to the corridor.

(Silence), he told me. (We're not going to call anyone's attention.)

"W-what about the cameras?" I stuttered. "They…"

(…are all closed by me), Samilin assured. (Just come, now.)

I followed him to a long dark corridor. We ran, until we came to the dock Samilin had talked of. It was so big that it looked eerie being empty and dark.

(Better keep the lights off), Samilin said. I watched the Andalite fighters that were stopped in rows. Some were bigger, some were so small that you could have driven them inside a Blade ship.

All of them looked more modern and streamlined than any Yeerk fighter I had ever seen in the docks owned by my fellows. Maybe Esplin was right – the Andalites were really better than us in _some_ things.

(That one is fast and easy to pilot and cover), Samilin said, pointing at one tiny fighter. Shivering from head to toe, I ran to its door and was about to step in, as I felt Samilin's hand on my shoulder.

(Good luck), he said.

I tried to say something but my lips were like paralyzed. I yanked myself out of Samilin's hold and crept into the fighter. It took me several minutes to understand how all those devices worked – good grief, isn't it enough that the Andalites have all their rituals and stuff? Do they have to make things such as piloting a fighter so damn complicated too? As I finally had managed to get my fighter to the speedway, I saw that Samilin was trotting after me. I looked at him through the window and did something I don't do often. I smiled.


	6. The Madness

--------------------------------------------

_There I walked, walked over the bridge _

_By the bridge I walked over the river._

_The bridge is large, it's far too large_

_A skeleton of steel that hears nothing_

_It stands still in the troubled water_

_Always upright in the icy whirls._

_The river licks its thin long legs_

_The satanic celestial one kisses._

_It's no bridge, it's a huge machinery_

_Stuck with all its enormous pulleys_

_With just one tiny rock holding them_

_Soon it will break and crush into dust._

_Soon the machine is ambush no more_

_It will not stand still and pant_

_But move! It will open creaking_

_The squeaking will rip my fragile nerves_

_The crying of the rusty iron_

_That has stood too long in water._

_It will let the great water masses go…_

_You hear, how it's already grating!_

_The black water, the cold water_

_The gloomy and icy wet grave…_

_There is a white skin-made mask there_

_Staring with its glassed eyes at me:_

"_Come here, come here, you pitiful one_

_Forget all, all without agony!"_

_Then the whirl moves, absorbs again_

_The thoughtless one to go with the stream_

_To the depths of sweet forgetting_

_To the arms of a loving mother._

_No, a madwoman should not walk alone_

_Should not go alone to the bridge_

_There the runaway Jack Frost is laughing_

_Bitterly playing the girders_

_In a horrid duet with the smoky beast_

_The flaming and roaring animal_

_Running so that the wind howls around it_

_That the iron screams and spits hot sparks._

_The masochistic poet by spirit_

_The surgeon's son reincarnated_

_Is fed with adoration of others_

_Worship of obedient sweet lads_

_But to the cold beautiful one she brings grapes_

_To the frivolous cynic she writes her sonnets!_

_Writing and bringing, she walks through the evil lands_

_Where ghosts dance their endless dance around her_

_Where the steel strings beat the infernal rhythm_

_Spitting acid against her face!_

Ms. Cata Tria, _The Madness_

-------------------------------------

**Chapter 5 – The Madness**

I stood on the bridge of a Blade ship, with my uniform coat brushed and cleaned and all the buttons and medals shined. I had been named to the lead of the war against the Ashimeq, a species from beyond the eastern border of the Yeerk Empire. I was proud and glad of the new quest, although the Ashimeq would be a piece of cake to my people. According to new Ashimeq-Controllers, they were submissive, somewhat sluggish. They were afraid of everything new and easily called it "nonsense" but if someone managed to convince an Ashimeq that they know something better than it does, it would never question anything they say. Humility and modesty was the base nature of an Ashimeq. The only thing an Ashimeq could be more than average was ugliness.

"An Andalite ship in DT-18! Fire!"

And of course the Andalites had been on the orbit of the Ashimeq planet too once when they had heard that we were taking over the species. That day had been quite peaceful until now. Andalites – or was it us? – had opened the fire half an hour ago. Occasionally they had been silent, and we Yeerks were just lying in ambush and shooting a couple of Dracon beams. Really, they hadn't even been visible. Now their fighters were dashing around in the blackness of space again, and our Bug Fighters sped after them.

One Dracon beam hit an Andalite fighter! It glowed for a moment and disappeared.

"Fried well", one Hork-Bajir-Controller hissed to his fellow. "One Andalite less in this universe."

One Andalite. Well, that was nothing. Or well, it _could_ be something to the other Andalites in the Dome Ship. Who knew what he meant to them. Maybe they would even have to send a sad message to the relatives of the Andalite.

What if the Andalite had been Samilin?

That idea just came to my mind. And I felt cold in my heart when I thought of it.

I pulled my hair, like I always do when I'm embarrassed or unsure. _Samilin. _It was two months since I had escaped from the Andalite ship and reached our Mother ship barely before starving to death. I had told everything to Visser Forty-Two and her crew and of course to the Council of Thirteen when they had wanted to see me – except that it had been Samilin, an Andalite, who had helped me away. If I had done that, they might have questioned my honesty. Why would an Andalite help a Yeerk who is loyal to its own people?

The truth was that I had helped him first. Even now, when I'm sitting at a gray table, in an apartment in a shabby suburb and writing this down, I'm wondering why. Something in Samilin's struggling in the slim had touched something inside me, I dare to say. But when I was standing at the bridge of the Blade Ship, all I could think was that I had done something terrible and irrevocable when I had been on the jungle planet. I was filthy. Spoilt by myself.

The word we Yeerks fear just a little less than the word "Kandrona starvation" and everything there was connected with it burst into my mind like an icy surge.

_Traitor._

Samilin had come to my mind several times within the two months but those times had been passing. Some detail in a ship had reminded me of the Andalite ships, or seeing some green planet had brought to my mind the jungle planet. Now, when I was standing on the bridge and thinking, I realized that my conscience called them _happy_ memories. I felt something warm when I thought of Samilin, how I had slept next to him. And thinking of Samilin dying in the fighter felt bitter and cold.

I was bearing a lethal virus called sympathy for Andalites.

I almost slapped myself and brought the sacred principles of a Visser back to my mind. I would serve my people. I would take over the Ashimeq and get more power and glory. I was a Yeerk, a representative of a developed and educated species.

Then I saw how an orange Dracon beam, from my own ship, flashed and burnt an Andalite fighter into atoms.

_No!_

I saw my underlings shaking hands and joking about "one Andalite less" again. Yes, yes. They were my kind. My people. I was one of them. I forced my face to a wide grin, one Andalite had been destroyed again…

_What if it had been Samilin? Or someone important to him?_

The thought gnawed and gnawed my innermost, like a little rock in water gnawed a cliff.

_I am a Visser!_ I snapped to myself. _I have killed Andalites before. It is my work! Who cares of some Samilin-Corrath-Gahar…_

I ought have not cared of him. I had no reason to care of him. Just one Andalite. Okay, he had saved my life, but I had also saved his, and it was no reason to really _care_, in the way I cared now…

No! I don't care! He is just one Andalite! Just one Andalite… 

I might as well have been magnetic and thrown an iron hammer. And the hammer hit my forehead quite hard.

He was so kind… and beautiful… and his side was so soft! And he warmed you willingly… 

That drove me crazy!

Without any explanations, without giving any instructions to my subordinates, I dashed out of the bridge.

"Visser!" someone cried after me but I didn't respond. I ran down the corridor, with my hands on my face, until I came to the door of my own private quarters. I burst in and rolled down onto the soft wide bed. Grasping my cheeks so hard that my nails cut the skin, I lay on the bed with my face against the pillow, and breathed deep.

I tried to think of something else than Samilin. Anything else. From the past and present battle tactics to my youth in the Homeworld. But somehow my thoughts always ended up to Samilin! I shrieked in frustration and rolled around, so that I stared at the dark blue ceiling. It had almost the same color as Samilin's fur. I stared and stared, and it as if came closer, until my face was pressed against it and oh, it felt so soft and warm, not coarse at all, not coarse like an emotionless killing machine's fur would probably be…

But Andalites seemed to have emotions after all. Or had Samilin's actions been caused merely by duty? I had saved him, and he had just paid his dues? Had there been any feelings after all? No pity? Was Samilin still the ruthless and arrogant moral guard of the galaxy – an Andalite?

That thought hurt. But it was still easing. It all had been merely duties. He had just done what he had had to do, without feeling anything. He was an Andalite Prince. A machine in a great war might's service. Just like me. The night in the jungle planet had been nothing. Just delirium, illusions, disturbances of mind. Emotions – phew. The galaxy was what it was as a place – a cold and dark emptiness, ruled by the one who had power and luck. Not even that – ruled by use and productiveness. To the great mindless and endless circle of life, what did not help the greatest urge – the one of survival – and could not be turned into formulas of mathematics, chemistry and physics, did not exist, at least they were absolutely no importance.

Emotions were beyond all formulas. They could be reduced into chemical processes in the brain, yes. But the knowledge of that all those feelings were merely wild orgies of various complicated chemicals did not help me – not to mention really _understanding_ them.

Suddenly I felt really small. It was new to me. I mean, I was the fourthly most important Visser in the mighty Yeerk Empire and all. But was I really anything? After my death – who would remember me? My slug-like body would probably form new Yeerks together with two other ones, and my host body, depending on its condition, would either be given to some other Yeerk or killed and made into Taxxon food. And so the ignorant circle of life would go ever on. Even if I was a Visser or even a Councilor, my death would not be a big newsflash. Who had been, in example, Councilor One before the current one? I had no idea who he or she had been, what kind. The titles the powerful Yeerks bear are faceless. They are taken and given, again and again. Visser Four? It could be whoever who just had enough skills.

Was this all pointless? Didn't it matter what a Yeerk achieved in his life? Would the hungry mouth of Time swallow medals, ranks, everything? When I thought of it, I knew it would be true with me. But what about beings such as Esplin Nine-Four-Double-Six? He was known by _everyone_ now. He was a _concept_. Many said his name with fear. The others with hate. Some with despise. The most with them all. Absolutely no-one took him by just a shrug, and that was merely because what _he _was. He had written his name to the galaxy history with blood, as he liked to say. Blood and an unconventional _jiafilek_, decadent, life. But I had no guts to do anything of what he had done. I had never had. I was too empathic to be a famous torturer and ruthless punisher, and too ambitious and tough to be remembered as the gentlest Visser of all times. I was too shy to insult or shock anyone with my lifestyle, and too tolerant to judge the views of the jiafileks.

Why? Why was I feeling all this? Why couldn't I get back into my former life, wearing a cool uniform, being Visser Four and saluted and honored by subordinates, serving the Empire? Self-evidently obeying the superior and giving out orders to the inferior?

And killing Andalites and enslaving other species… _Inferior_ species, I tried to correct. But something inside me kept on crying: _other_ species.

Soon the something got Samilin-Corrath-Gahar's face.

No matter if I wanted it or not, the night in the jungle had left a mark in me. It had been so different than I had ever experienced. There had been just me, Esaren One-Nine-Nine, and the strange Andalite. Nobody else. I had been apart of other Yeerks practically never before…

Duty or whatever had Samilin's actions been: I had to talk to him again. I would become crazy if I had to go on without any idea of whether Samilin still lived, or if he had been caught of letting me go… what had happened to him in that case? Death sentence, no doubt. I didn't know how the Andalites executed their traitors. A few months before I would have guessed something very gory and humiliating, but now I wasn't too sure of that.

Although I didn't know if Samilin was – or had been – on the Andalite ship we had fought, creating a connection with it and calling Samilin was all I could do. On my ship there was only one terminal where one could create advanced connection with alien ships. It was at the bridge. I had to wait until our artificial night would begin, for then at the bridge there would be no-one else than the regular guards… As the Visser on the ship, I could easily drive them out and be alone at the bridge, without anybody having a right for questions.

I didn't step out of my room before the artificial night had begun. Not even when Sub-Visser Eighty-Two visited at my door and told me that after losing eight fighters, the Andalites had fled away – but they would surely come back, surely.

"You know, Visser, the Andalitish moral doesn't accept giving up when one should", he joked and laughed. I rolled over in my bed and muttered something like "go away then, let me sleep, I'm tired".

And tired I was, but I still couldn't sleep. It sounds stupid, a weak sentimental Yeerk's talk, but I was too concerned about what I would do within a couple of hours. I was extremely nervous. _Hell, he's going to creep to the bridge on the sly and have an intimate talk with an enemy_, you may sneer there, but it wasn't just that. I was thinking of Samilin. He might not be on the ship near us, or… alive at all any more. It was kind of an easing thought… Anyway, I had to find that out. I _had_ to.

Finally, in about two and a half hours, all the normal lights of the ship were automatically dimmed and then turned completely off. I hiked up my uniform and sneaked out of my room. The corridor was empty, only the bluish nightlights were glowing eerily. They reminded me of Samilin – simply because they were blue, like his fur. I restrained my want to run, since it could have woken up someone. Anyway, step by step the bridge came closer.

On the bridge there were warriors on night watch. They were nodding a little – those incompetent fools. But all of them flinched as if they had got an electric shock as I walked closer and they realized who I was.

"Visser?" one of the warriors whispered. "What… what's the matter? Why are you here in this time?"

"Because of nothing that would be your business", I snapped. "Get out of here. Now! All of you!"

Looking incredulous, one by one they all left their seats and places and dragged themselves out.

Shivering, I walked to one of the terminals and pressed my palms onto it.


End file.
